Continuing at dawn on the following day, we crossed the extensive gravel-covered plain which lies between the Ararouat river and the northern base of Tarrouaji, and camped about noon on the In Ouajou river (altitude, 2,750 ft.), a small dry river-bed in flat country north of the massive hill range.
In the late afternoon a thunderstorm advanced over us, and, much to my relief, some rain fell; for, previous to leaving Aouderas, I had been warned that no water is to be found anywhere in the neighbourhood of Tarrouaji in the dry season, and all the goumiers were averse to my attempting to make the journey. Nevertheless, I had set out; but when search for water in the neighbourhood of our In Ouajou camp had proved completely fruitless, I began to fear that our plight would force me to give up the intention of going round Tarrouaji—and then the storm broke, leaving small pools of water in its wake, and an awkward situation was saved. As the natives put it: “Allah had listened to me.”
3rd August. I remarked this morning, after the rain, a few short hours of dawn, when earth was damp and grass roots already green and the pipe of wilderness birds filled the air with unwonted cheerfulness. . . . For a moment spring in the desert . . . ere stilled in its birth by scorching sun and driving sand.
Travelled from daylight to dusk round the eastern base of Tarrouaji, and camped at a pool of water, which was found close in under the hills after some searching.
From the north and east the massif of Tarrouaji appears a great jumble of hills of no great height, which do not die out at the plain’s edge with the impressive strength that may be found in great mountain slopes or towering cliffs, but rather do they tail away in broken diminishing lines to outlying plains, where little straggling hills of rock are seen as far as the eye can penetrate.
On the following day I did not resume caravan travel, but left the goumiers in camp and set out before dawn to climb into Tarrouaji hill-tops. During the day the highest of numerous altitudes recorded was 3,100 ft., and, so far as I could judge by eye, I doubt if any of the innumerable crowded hill-tops which constitute this range exceed that figure. As the altitude of our camp on the east base of the range was 2,300 ft., the actual elevation of the range itself, to its highest points, in that quarter was therefore only 800 ft.
Those hills hold wild and barren scenes and no fertility, and are seldom, if ever, entered by natives, which accounts, no doubt, for the number of Barbary Sheep which I found inhabiting this range and the ease with which I could approach them. Hitherto I had been mightily pleased if I got a single shot at sheep during a day’s hunting, but on this day I killed no fewer than four animals, and looked upon half a dozen others within range which I allowed to go unharmed. It was here that I secured the best head taken by me in Aïr of the new subspecies of Barbary Sheep (Ammotragus lervia angusi).
5th August.—We left our camp on the east side of Tarrouaji in the middle of the night, and travelled on round to the south side of the range as far as the district known as Tin-Daouin, where we camped for the day while I skinned a specimen of vulture I had shot. Thunder had been over us yesterday, but very little rain fell; however, to-day we entered country where it was apparent there had been heavy rain yesterday, for the ground was water-soaked, and the sands of the river-beds were cast in freshly lain wavelets as the result of flood an hour or two subsided.
6th August.—We saddled our camels and were away at dawn, and travelled till 3.30 p.m., when we camped in Tin-Teborag valley (altitude, 1,900 ft.), having left the hills of Tarrouaji behind and advanced near to Agades, which now lay due west not far distant. Throughout the day the country was rolling and somewhat roughly broken, while a number of broad valleys were crossed at intervals where river tributaries trend south to join the mainstream Tin-Daouin, which passes eastward in a flat valley well away from the hills. Those valleys, with river-bed in their centre, are wide and very shallow, as is usual everywhere in lowland in Aïr, with little or no banks; merely a slight slope of gravel or rock surroundings, terminating where sand and grass tussocks and trees of the valley begin. Much of the undulating country is of pleasant warm-coloured browns and greys in certain morning and evening lights: wide stretches of ground surface of pebbles of an orderly smallness and sameness, as smoothly and well-arranged as a pebble beach on sea-shore which the tide has just left. Indeed the whole outlook in such foothill gravel country of an early morn is remarkable: strange because of the absence of earth and vegetation, but with an artistic appeal to the eye on account of its striking orderliness and cleanness and uncommon purity of colour.
On the following evening we travelled in to Agades: my travels in the mountains of Aïr at an end, and the long journey south to Nigeria all that lay between me and the completion of my travels.